European and private search engines (2026): who actually runs their own index
Most tools sold as a private search engine or a European search engine are an interface over Bing or Google, not an independent search engine. We checked Qwant, Ecosia and their shared EUSP index, Startpage, Mojeek, SearXNG and Brave Search against the operators' own pages, verified 10 July 2026, and sorted the ones that run their own index from the ones that resell someone else's.
A private search engine is not automatically its own search engine
Two very different products are sold under the same label. Most searches for a private search engine or a European search engine return a mix of them, and telling them apart is the whole point of this page.
The first kind runs its own web index: it operates a crawler, stores its own copy of the web, and ranks results itself. The second kind is an interface. It protects your privacy, or carries a European brand, but it fetches results from Microsoft Bing or Google and hands them back to you. Both can be reasonable choices. They are not the same thing, and the difference decides how independent the service actually is. Building and running an index at web scale is rare and costly, so independent-index operators are the exception, not the rule.
Everything below was checked against the operators' own pages on 10 July 2026.
Qwant, Ecosia, and the shared European index
Qwant is French. Since 2023 it has been owned by Synfonium, the group assembled by OVHcloud founder Octave Klaba: his investment vehicles Jezby Ventures and Deep Code hold about 75 percent and the French state investor Caisse des Dépôts holds about 25 percent. Ecosia is German and structured differently. It is steward-owned, and the Purpose Foundation holds a veto share that, by the company's own account, means Ecosia cannot be sold and its profits stay tied to its mission.
In November 2024 the two formed a joint venture, European Search Perspective (EUSP), owned equally and based in Paris, to build a European search index. The index is called Staan. This is the most substantial attempt yet to give a European search engine an index of its own rather than reselling Bing.
On its current state, the primary sources say this. Ecosia announced on 7 August 2025 that it had begun serving results from the EUSP index to users in France, and said it was aiming to serve 30 percent of French queries from it by the end of 2025. Ecosia's own help center, checked on 10 July 2026, lists three result providers, Microsoft Bing, Google and EUSP, and states plainly that EUSP is currently only available in France while Bing is available to all users. So in July 2026 both products still serve most of their results, and nearly all results outside France, from Bing.
What cannot be established from a primary source: the exact share of French queries the index serves today, and whether Qwant's own consumer results are yet served from Staan rather than from Bing. The EUSP corporate site still describes the index in prospective terms, and Ecosia's help center only documents Ecosia's use of it. Treat the index as real and partially live in France, and treat everything beyond that as not yet confirmed.
Startpage: a privacy proxy over Google, Dutch and part US-owned
Startpage is Dutch, operated by Surfboard Holding B.V. in the Netherlands. It is not an independent search engine: it queries Google and returns those results to you without the tracking, logging or profiling that a direct Google search carries. That is a real privacy function, and it is a proxy, not an index.
Its ownership deserves to be stated plainly rather than omitted. In 2019 the US advertising-technology company System1 took a significant stake in Startpage through a unit called Privacy One Group, a change that drew criticism at the time for how little was disclosed. Startpage's position is that its Dutch and EU legal basis for data protection is unchanged. Both facts are true at once: the results are private by design, and the company has a US investor in its ownership chain. Verified 10 July 2026.
Mojeek: an independent index, but UK and outside the EU
Mojeek is the clearest example of the rare category. It is operated by Mojeek Limited in the United Kingdom, and it crawls and serves its own index using its own crawler, MojeekBot, covering several billion pages by its own account. It does not resell Bing or Google. For a reader who specifically wants results from an operator that indexes the web itself, Mojeek is the straightforward answer.
The caveat is jurisdictional. The United Kingdom left the EU, so Mojeek is not an EU company and does not fall under EU law by membership. For buyers whose requirement is strictly EU jurisdiction, that places it alongside Switzerland as adjacent rather than inside. For buyers whose requirement is independence from the Bing and Google indexes, Mojeek meets it directly. Verified 10 July 2026.
SearXNG: powerful, but you have to run it yourself
SearXNG is often listed next to the products above, and it is a different kind of thing. It is free, open-source metasearch software: it takes your query, sends it to other search engines, and merges the results while stripping tracking. It has no index of its own, and it is not a hosted service you sign up for.
For a reader who wants an answer today, that has two practical consequences. Running it as intended means self-hosting it on your own infrastructure, which gives you full control and no third party in the middle. Alternatively you can use one of the public instances run by volunteers, but then you are trusting whoever operates that instance, and the quality and privacy of those instances vary. SearXNG is a strong option for someone willing to host it, and not a drop-in consumer product for someone who is not. Verified 10 July 2026.
Where Brave Search sits
Brave Search is worth placing correctly. It runs its own independent index, which is genuinely uncommon and puts it in the same rare category as Mojeek on that single measure. But Brave Software, Inc. is incorporated in San Francisco, so the operator sits under US jurisdiction, including the US CLOUD Act (Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act), which can reach data held by US-incorporated operators. Brave Search is therefore a private search engine with its own index, and a US one. We mention it only so it is not miscounted as European. Verified 10 July 2026.
Serving results is not the same as owning an index
| Engine | Operator country | Own index | Independent of Bing/Google |
|---|---|---|---|
| Qwant, Ecosia (via EUSP/Staan) | France, Germany | building, partial in France | partly; most results still Bing |
| Startpage | Netherlands (US investor) | no (Google proxy) | no |
| Mojeek | United Kingdom | yes | yes |
| SearXNG | self-hosted | no (metasearch) | depends on the engines it queries |
| Brave Search | United States | yes | yes, but US-operated |
The honest summary in July 2026 is that Europe has one serious attempt at its own search index, EUSP's Staan, and it is only partially live and only in France. Everything else is a trade-off: an EU brand over Bing, a privacy proxy over Google, an independent index outside the EU, or software you run yourself.
How this was checked
Every fact here was taken from the operators' own pages and announcements on 10 July 2026: the European Search Perspective corporate site, Ecosia's launch post and its help center article on result providers, Startpage's ownership disclosures and contemporaneous reporting, Mojeek's own description of its crawler and index, and Brave's own description of its index and company. Where a current status could not be confirmed from a primary source, in particular the live share of French queries served by EUSP and whether Qwant's consumer results come from Staan yet, the article states that it is not established rather than filling the gap. Search engines are free consumer products with no pricing tier, DPA or sub-processor list, so this is an article rather than a directory listing.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the most independent European search engine in 2026?
- For results served from a genuinely European index, the answer as of July 2026 is the EUSP index (named Staan), built by the French and German engines Qwant and Ecosia. It is live only partially and only in France so far. Ecosia began serving a share of French queries from it in August 2025, and both products still send most of their traffic to Microsoft Bing. Mojeek runs a fully independent index but is a UK company, so it sits outside the EU.
- Is a private search engine the same as an independent search engine?
- No, and this is the distinction that matters. A privacy search engine such as Startpage protects you from tracking and profiling, but it fetches its results from Google and passes them back anonymously. It has no index of its own. Running your own crawler and index is rare and expensive, so most privacy-focused engines are an interface over Bing or Google rather than an independent search engine.
- Which search engines actually crawl and index the web themselves?
- Very few. Among the options in this article, Mojeek (United Kingdom) crawls and serves its own index, Brave Search (United States) runs its own index, and the Qwant and Ecosia joint venture EUSP is building one, called Staan, that is partially live in France. Startpage is a proxy over Google, and SearXNG is a metasearch aggregator with no index of its own.
- Is Brave Search a European search engine?
- No. Brave Search runs an independent index, which is notable, but Brave Software, Inc. is incorporated in San Francisco, so it operates under US jurisdiction, including the US CLOUD Act. It is a private search engine, not a European one, and we list it here only to place it correctly.
- How was this checked?
- Each claim was verified against the operators' own pages and announcements on 10 July 2026: the European Search Perspective corporate site, Ecosia's launch post and help center, Startpage's ownership disclosures, and Mojeek's and Brave's own descriptions of their index. Where a current status could not be confirmed from a primary source, the article says so rather than guessing.
For every product we read the public DPA, sub-processors document, hosting region declaration, and corporate ownership records. Each is timestamped. Signals are editorial, re-verified quarterly. We never accept self-attestation.